Internet radio is the transmission of audio programs to one or more recipients via the Internet. There are many different types of Internet radio stations in operation today. Some Internet radio stations are simply simulcasts of traditional radio stations. However, other Internet radio stations are completely independent from traditional radio stations and broadcast only on the Internet. Because of the increase in Internet connection speeds and the decrease in connection costs, the popularity of Internet radio is likely to continue to increase.
There are many components that are involved in the creation of an Internet radio station. Initially, a program signal for the Internet radio station is generated. The program signal includes the content of the Internet radio station. Once the program signal has been generated, encoding tools are used to encode the program signal into a data stream. A server exposes the data stream to clients, which may connect to the server and receive the data stream.
The data stream for an Internet radio station may include both media payload data and metadata. The media payload data is the data that comprises the content of the Internet radio station. For example, if the Internet radio station plays music, the media payload data includes the music data. In contrast, the metadata is descriptive data about the media payload data. For example, the metadata corresponding to a particular song may include the title of the song, the album name, an image from the song's album, etc.
Traditionally, when a client accesses a data stream for an Internet radio station, the client receives both the metadata and the media payload data. However, under some circumstances, the client may only use the metadata. For example, the client may be configured to display the current metadata from several different Internet radio stations to the user, thereby allowing the user to quickly see what is currently playing on the different stations. As another example, the metadata from one or more Internet radio stations may be used for data mining operations.
One approach for obtaining the metadata for an Internet radio station is to receive both the metadata and the media payload data, and then discard the media payload data. However, such an approach is inefficient because network resources are used to transmit and receive the media payload data, which the client does not use. Accordingly, benefits may be realized by improved systems and methods for obtaining the metadata for an Internet radio station.